So last Wednesday morning, I went to the pool, did a few stretches, a quick warm up and just started swimming.

Let's be clear about a few things. I was never a distance swimmer, part of the fun of this year has been finding out what my body would do over long distances. The official swim marathon is 5k, I did that once as 10 year old and never bothered since. I've done plenty of 5,000 and even 6,000 training sessions as a teenager and once or twice as a grasping at youth man in his thirties, but that's interval training with plenty of rest, even as a youth that was tough.

So it was a little foolhardy to do it coming straight out a pretty bad illness, but, you know, nothing ventured....

The first 1,000 wasn't that great. You lose your feel for the water amazingly quickly if you don't keep up up and it was nearly three weeks since I'd last got wet in anger. It took the first 1000m to find any sort of rhythm and I was a little worried at my shortness of breath. But by 1,500 things had changed. Psychologists talk about Flow, that weird point when you get lost in a task and the body and mind blur together, everything else is shut out, you're fluidly doing, aware of the tiniest detail within the task, but nothing else.

When I used to train for 30 hours a week it was nearly always like that, it doesn't come often enough now, especially when a big chunk of th build up was sorting out a malfunctioning stroke, but it was here now. My breathing stabilised, my hands felt like frying pans in the water as they pulled through, nothing seemed to ache too much - after 60 lengths i could finally start.

The intention had been to keep to 20 minutes per 1,000 metres, for first 4,000, and then go for broke in in the last 2,000. That should have been a nice controlled pace, and hopefully, quite easy pace before letting rip.

I can still do 1,500 metres in under 21 minutes (or could before I got ill), that's 1.45 per 100, I was giving myself lots of leeway at this pace, and with a sub-two hours target. But this was the unknown, I'd never gone this far before.

That dreadful start made a mockery of all this and after 2,000 I was on 45 minutes. 5 minutes behind pace. Bollocks. I was out of condition and the first 1,000 or so had been controlled thrashing, it's was understandable but not acceptable. So I decided to push it. I felt good now, I didn't feel tired, quite the opposite, I was buzzing.

I hit 4,000 metres in, almost exactly 1 hour 20. Bang on course. I was breathing harder now, but nothing to write home about, so I began to increase the pace. Which worked for 500m or so, then things started to go a little wrong.

I've some scar tissue in my right shoulder that sometimes flares up. If I'm swimming, it means that when I pull my arm through the water I get a sickening pain that feels like a rusty scalpel being gouged right in. And perversely, it decided to say hello. I can get around this usually by my arm entering the water a little to the right instead of in line with my shoulder and an hip and pulling through a little further out. The rest if the stroke needs to compensate and in training that's fine. But not after 160 lengths.

Suddenly I was thinking again, and my body decided to tell me it was tired. My lungs were struggling and I was gulping air in, turning my head to get as much as I could and making my stroke lopsided, while accounting for the right arm. The more I thought about it, the more I began to thrash. Then everything began to hurt. The right arm was working harder than the left and really ached, the legs were working too hard to keep my wobbly body lined up properly and everything just ached.

By 5,000 I didn't dare look at the time, I just kept going, concentrating on only two things: keeping my breathing as regular of possible and that right arm. Then suddenly the pain in the shoulder went away again. Straight away I put my arm right and things started to work again, it felt relatively smooth, thought it still hurt. Now I was putting in effort and getting something back.

Everything was hurting, my lungs were on fire and I was at that point in sport when you want to stop as much as you want to carry on. You viscerally hate the pain, yet you welcome it too, it shows you're doing something worthwhile and the same time it tells you how fallible you are. I wanted to find out what my body could do and it was telling me (at least what it could do after an illness and lay off).

I think there's a choice you can make at this point. You can focus on the excruciating sensation in you body, or you can choose to ignore it and focus on something else, so I began to count my strokes. When my stroke works, I do a length in 11 strokes, when I go ragged it starts to go up. I focused on stretching out and counting to 11 in each length. And it seemed to work, I can't remember anything from the last stretch apart from the counting, until my body went numb.

With 200 metres to go the pain went, the form disappeared, I couldn't feel a thing. The harder I tried the less anything seemed to happen. So I flailed for those final eight lengths. And then it was over.

I looked up at the clock and found it was 1 hour 58 minutes and 43 seconds. I didn't even care, I was just pathetically grateful it was all over.

I had 10 minute swim down, drank a litre of water, had a long coffee and a mountain of sandwiches in the cafe and then drove to the station and got on the train to London. That was it.

It was an odd sense of anti-climax. When I was young, Mum and Dad and other swimmers were there to cheer, congratulate and commiserate. This felt as personally important as any other sporting thing I've ever done, apart from beating Dad at tennis for the first time maybe, but there was no one to see it apart from me. And that was fine, maybe even better. This was done for the joy of doing something well (adequately as it turned out) the only things to beat were the clock and my own weakness. Totally fitting it was all done alone.

So it's over. No big fanfare, that's the end of this pointless exploration in grasping at youth and self delusion.

The only other thing to say is that I seem to have spent my swimming energy for now. I've only been in the pool once since and it seemed much more effort than before, like that swim depleted some sort of swimming pool of energy. I've done a workout in the gym, which I quite enjoyed for a change (don't really like gyms that much) and look forward to more cycling, but I need to force myself to swim.

So I need another goal. After a rest, time to start training for next year's Great North Swim - hope they don't cancel the damn thing or this time next year I'll have to do something really extreme.

September 24, 2010

Yesterday was supposed to be the 'Great North Swim indoors' i.e 6 kilometers in pool under two hours, to justify the money sponsors have kindly donated and eradicate my former condition as a mess of nervous energy, carbs and frustration.

I say former because nature has taken things into its own hands and hit me with a chest infection. With any look I'll do it next week, but under hours is becoming more of a challenge,

As the ever lucid John pointed out, the equilibrium of the finely athlete is easily upset. Now, despite the lacing of acerbic wit that laces any Dodds statement, and the fact that my body is far from finely tuned, more of an amateur tribute band, it's true that properly training for sport isn't really that good for you.

A body using up its energy to recover from the damage training does to it can't fight infection as well, a body that is more highly strung than most is more prone to aches and pains. It's a bit silly really, isn't it?

That's why I feel sorry for lemmings in gymns and stuff that workout for vanity. You can see them, not really enjoying second, pain etched on their faces, but pushing on. Then you see the others, mostly not in a gymn, working just as hard, or harder, but you can see the joy in their eyes. Their doing it for how it feels, to feel alive. I couldn't do it just to look good, but when you look like me, there wouldn't be much point - it would be a bit like trying to improve a DFS ad by casting Angelina Jolie...

September 08, 2010

I decided to do the Great North Swim for a number of reasons. Much of that was to do with doing something for me in a new life as a Dad that means doing nearly everything for someone else (happily I might add), curiosity about how I'd do, having a goal to keep my swimming alive and, well, just seeing what happened along the way.

There were some setbacks along the way, like having to remodel my stroke, there were welcome surprises like enjoying hardcore training in a group again. However, behind all that was the event looming closer and closer. I loved how it felt when the swim morphed from an lovely idea, to something I slowly realised I actually had to go through with, to a creeping reality. It resolved itself last week to something I felt I was ready for last week - I felt energised by the challenge, knowing I was ready, but still afraid. Not by finishing or doing it well, I had put the work in, but knowing it was going to hurt...and at once relishing and hating it.

There's a moment for anyone doing something challenging, especially sport. Just before you start, where you take a deep breath and ask, "Do I really want to do this?" Then the joy in knowing that you do, of course you do. It makes you feel alive, it makes you feel like not one of th ordinary people, it strips away all the extraneous rubbish that life in the 21st century entails, you're just you making a choice.

That's what it was feeling like last week. Then I found out it was postponed, now it's been canceled. And I feel like somebody stick a pin in me and all the air is leaking out. I just couldn't be bothered to get up this morning and go swimming.

Well balls to that! People have sponsored me, it can't just tail off into nothing. So I'm going to do a swim marathon in exactly two weeks time. That's 5K, or 3.1 miles metres non-stop. No, that's too easy. Let's say 6K - more than an official swim marathon, 3.7 miles. I reckon I can do that in 2 hours flat. It will hurt, but that's the point. That's 240 lengths of a 25m swimming pool. Cool. I've haven't done a swim marathon since I was ten years old. I've never done 6k - not even in a cumulative training session.

September 06, 2010

The Great North Swim was postponed this weekend. Something to do with Green Algae.

This was frustrating, all that pent up nervous energy etc. There's nothing worse when something you've been building up to doesn't happen. This resulted in a particularly intense bike ride on Saturday morning.

On the other hand, there's more time to train and since we booked a hotel, we had to go anyway. This had it's compensations..

September 02, 2010

It's the Great North Swim on Saturday, it's nearly here. Only one go in the pool, tomorrow morning, before the big one.No point making it hurt, just keep ticking over, maintain feel for the water and hope it was better than Wedneday, when everything felt off.

Years ago, after few hard months before big events, we started tapering down over a number of weeks. The sessions got gradually easier as the day drew closer. Not this time. A week in the sea, an extra hard pool session and then a bit of easy gliding tomorrow.

By 2.25pm on Saturday (hopefully) it will all be over. Time to check in here....

...and go lo-fi. Fish and chips on the water's edge before holing up in a pub somewhere. But not before I have a very hot bath and a lay down for bit.

August 17, 2010

So I'm finally doing the Great North Swim two weeks on Saturday. I forgot to mention that I'm trying to raise money for Cancer Research as well as grasp at youth. If you're any way inclined, you can sponsor me here.

I chose them because I lost two Grandparents to cancer and seeing the way the one I have left (90) lights up when she sees my baby boy makes we wish they had been around to see him too (in case you're wondering the fourth died before I was born).

August 10, 2010

So it was the regular Saturday morning pain and suffering swim session this weekend. In the pool for 7.30am to cover swim four miles or so.

I've been improving quickly since I altered my stroke and these sessions have reminded me how to really push it. My body has actually changed shape, the shoulders are broader, the arm muscles longer,tougher, but smaller; little things like that.

This one was special. There's a pecking order of lanes, with the top two for people who can really motor. I tried one these lanes a couple of weeks ago and my body caved in, but I was made to try it again.

Last time, there was point when it began to hurt and I dug in to find nothing. Quite the opposite, I seized up. This time that point took longer to arrive and when it did I found another gear. I wasn't just living with the other swimmers, I was challenging them.

It's an amazing feeling to reach into yourself and find something extra there. When you can't do anymore and you just want to give in, going that little bit further pulls something out of you'd forgotten was there.

It felt good. I still won't do as well at The Great North Swim as I wanted, but I need to feel that gear again. So I'll be carrying on training at this pace when it's all over. Addicted I'm afraid.

August 02, 2010

It's only four weeks until the Great North Swim and I'm nowhere near bloody ready. It's going to be more survival than doing well, partly down to waiting too long to do anything about my bad stroke, partly down to a baby boy precluding training nearly enough. No point moaning about stuff you can't change. I'll finish and I'll finish in style, I just know I'll be annoyed knowing I could have done better.

The thing is, it was never really about the result, I needed a goal to keep me going. It's tough getting out of bed at 6.15 when you've haven't been allowed to sleep by a teething baby. And so it turned out, without the added motivation, I would have trained less and been more miserable for it.

But the thing about a journey is that you're never sure what you pick up along the way, and what you gain is not always what you expected. It's the premise for one of my favourite ad campaigns:

...but that's not the point. In the quest to sort out the stroke, I found out about some intensive training session for oldies that haven't quite lost it and want get more if it back. They're bloody hard. 7.30am on a Saturday morning, my new regular date with pain and suffering. But it's great to be training with people again. Having a coach and people around makes you push that little bit harder. No chance of kidding yourself you're working hard, with these session you know you are.

So all that's good, I've a new regular thing to look forward/dread. But the first time I went, I bumped into someone I used to swim with more than twenty years ago. It was lovely to see her and find out what she's been up to (I still can't close the circle and get my head around her being a Mum of two). Anyway, it brought lots of memories of those times and the people I spent it with. It hurst to think of those days and know they're gone forever, but it's also good to think about them and how great those times were. Made me realise I'd kept in touch with them more.

That's why falling short of what I set out to do doesn't really matter. It's true of this and true of everything as far as I'm concerned.

July 06, 2010

The training for the Great North Swim hit a snag a few weeks back. I couldn't go any faster.

There was a point where I was getting pretty good, and had a lot more speed in me, but technique was letting me down. There had been something before but this was worse.

There's a point where flaws in the basics will show, no matter how hard you paper over the cracks - and that's where I was. I even started to go backwards, thinking so hard about my stroke, I was getting too tense and adjusting other bits to compensate. From something going wrong with my right arm, my left arm went wrong and then even my kick started to go all floopy (non-technical term).

Nothing for it, I went to my first professional coaching session in over 20 years. And within half an hour, found the problem was with my head. By simply looking forward another 20 degrees, that created the space for arm to enter the water at the right point, which sorted my pull through, which sorted my breathing, which sorted my balance, which sorted my legs. Next thing I know, I'm cutting through the water like I used to.

The problem is, I've lost a lot of time, so I have to redouble training efforts. Muscles are annoying things - they get used to working in a certain way and have to be taught to forget what they know. That's why any swimmer isn't allowed to push themselves to the limit in training until their technique is sound - when you get tired, your stroke breaks down and the muscles remember to work that way.

So right now, I'm training them to remember to work how the should, no matter how tired they get. It's taking patience, but we're almost there.

In work, that's how you should approach strategy and the work that arises from it I(see what I did there).

It's no good glossing over a slight weakness in the creative brief, or something that doesn't chime in the work. As things progress, it will turn into something major. It needs to be watertight, it needs to be picked up, shaken around and given a general good kicking before you're confident you can move on. A general 'it'll be all right will just get you no where. Anyway..

It was wierd, but nice to go back to a really serious swimming setting. In proper pool that's deep enough to not make waves when proper swimmers do there stuff. To dive off proper blocks again. I'm sure just dipping back into that atmosphere made as much difference as the coaching - but nevertheless, there's only so much you can do on your own, no matter how good (or bad) you are, you should never be arrogant enough to think you have nothing left to learn, or someone else cannot help you.

Coming back to work again, ALWAYS talk your thinking through with someone else - you hear your words from their point of views and the holes become apparent very quickly - it's something to do with mirror neurons (similar to playing a killer song to a mate and hearing it through their ears and realising it's not so good).

May 19, 2010

There's a saying that you should choose your enemies carefully, and if there isn't there jolly well should be. In so many ways, a good enemy can be extremely useful if utilised properly.

I did one or two things to be proud of when I was swimming, yet the thing that gave me the most joy was winning the 12 and under Leeds and District gold medal for 200 medley. Small and local, although being the best in your city isn't that insignificant I guess, I'd kill to be the best tennis player in Leeds, the best physicist, the best cook or even the best planner for that many. Anyhooo...

Being the best in Leeds wasn't that special for me as a swimmer, but beating Leigh Oates certainly was. All the way through junior swimming so far, he kept cropping up. Beat me into second in Leeds, beat me into second in the North East, beat me into second in races abroad. Always just that little bit faster. It drove me crazy (he was a great friend too, but it didn't stop me wanting to beat him more than anything).

Life as a swimmer at that age is hard. Getting up to go swimming in a cold pool before school, racing home after school to do homework, no social life. That's hard. But the simple, searing pain of training is the hardest. There's a Small difference between just training hard and pushing it a little further. It's not much, but it counts for everything. Not so much in fitness etc, but how it makes you mentally hard. There's nothing in a sports competition you should go through that you haven't overcome in training, and just squeezing out an extra one percent in a swimming race is the difference between first and last.

Thinking of finally beating him made that possible. That race was the first time I beat him, and only just. And I made me happier than anything else I've experienced in sport.

Enemies makes things more interesting, they stop complacency, they force you to be better. That's why I love this idea from Nike, it's about a truth.

The truly great athletes have a nemesis to test themselves against. Coe had Ovett, Mcenroe had Borg, Robinson had Duran AND Haggler, Federer has Nadal.

That's why I probably love this Gatorade idea even more...

Enabling old rivals to Settle scores from years ago. Genius. The layers of story to bake into this....

Anyway, a rivalry can make the nobodies feel great for a little while too, even little boys swimming in race only 50 or so people really care about.

It's also a great way to get strategy quick. Find a mortal enemy, don't blindly hate it or discount what it does. Respect it, look at what it does find way to overcome it. That can be a another brand, but it can be something in life too- which is a smart way for big number ones to stay hungry. It keeps you sharp, stops you getting lazy, but fighting the good fight and involving your community is a great way to generate the irrational love and loyalty brands should be gunning for.

By the way, it's easy to get find an enemy to get motivated for the Great North swim, that enemy is watching the last vestiges of youth limp into the distance. No bloody way. Even vanity can be useful in peverse way eh?

March 02, 2010

So I've quietly been getting on with training for the Great North Swim. Working out my notice at TBWA helped getting in the swing of things, amongst thinking about women's hair and chickens (not at the same time) I progressively had more time to, in the first instance, have a lunch break of sorts, and then really long lunch breaks.

The first few sessions we're the same. 800 meters warm up. Swim 1,500 meters (nearly a mile) as hard as I can. Rest for two minutes, then swim 800 meters as hard as I can. It was all about baking some endurance into muscles that were not only used to not swimming as much as they should, they hadn't been asked to do long distance swimming much at all, ever.

At first, just getting through the 1,500 has been tough, at around 1,000 everything started getting ragged and progressively worse. The 800 was a nightmare.

It's always odd when you do your very first session. It's at once depressing finding out how bad you are and exhilarating to be back in the routine, knowing you're going to improve, anticipating the day when the hurt begins to fade a bit and you have space to REALLY train, looking forward to weird trance like state when you're at one with you're body, not really thinking, totally lost in it. Not really present, but in the moment more than ever.

That's what most swim races were like for me. The odd trance state thing. I can't really describe the build up or the race, but I can vividly remember how it felt to finish. Weird that.

Anyway, eventually there was the session when the pain still kicked in, then went away. It's been like that ever since and I'm getting faster. Little niggles in the stroke are getting evened out. My elbow wasn't high enough on the left, meaning my head came too far out of the water when I breathed, meaning my legs kicked too hard to keep balance....little things, small corrections.

This week I'm going to introduce some speed. 50m sprints, probably 20 of them with 10 second rests in between. I'll need that at the start and at the end. When open water races start, it's crowded, a bit of a free for all, you get elbows in the face once or twice. I want to pull away from as many people as possible. Then at the end, I don't want to limp home, I want to get that extra zip in the last few hundred meters, it will feel good and I fancy overtaking people at the end, no matter how badly I've done.

I'm going to experiment with some medleys (a length of every stroke).They get the heart pounding and it will stop any muscle imbalances developing - the problem with doing front crawl all the time is that you can't help using some muscles on one side more than the other. It doesn't matter over short distances, you breathe every three strokes, alternating sides...but that' not possible over long distances, not for me.

Anyway, if you're not bored by this, I might resurrect Tired is Stupid. I never did that properly, but the three people who read it liked some bits of it.